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GM Ricciardi dares Jays to cut him loose

<p>So I wake up yesterday morning, flick on the radio and immediately hear the voice of Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi, saying: “If they want to fire me, they can fire me. I can get another job in two seconds.”</p>

So I wake up yesterday morning, flick on the radio and immediately hear the voice of Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi, saying: “If they want to fire me, they can fire me. I can get another job in two seconds.”

And then, after giving my head a good shake to make sure I’m not dreaming, I start asking myself these questions:

Why would the man talk like this? Is he trying to get himself fired? Is he daring ownership to buy out his contract?

Does he really think he could find another position so quickly?

Considering that his team has consistently been a pretender instead of a contender, is he suffering from serious delusions of grandeur?

Oh, and the other day Ricciardi was saying that, if he fired John Gibbons as manager, 12 other major-league clubs would be lining up to hire him.

And so I asked myself these questions?

Does Ricciardi overrate Gibbons because they are friends and former roommates? Does Ricciardi not realize that the general perception within baseball is that Gibbons may have an anger-management problem?

Hey, I like J.P., but there are some weird comments coming from him these days, and I wonder whether the pressure in Toronto has gotten to him.

• There are strong rumblings that ex-Raptors luminary Vince Carter will exercise his option to terminate his New Jersey contract and will become a free agent after the coming season.

The reason? He may wish to play in Orlando or Charlotte because he and his wife, Ellen, are getting divorced, sources say.

If she gets custody of the Carters’ one-year-old, sources say, Ellen is thinking of moving to her hometown in South Carolina. Sources say Carter could be motivated to sign with the Magic or Bobcats to stay close. Both clubs have enough cap room to sign him.

• Former Sportsnet anchor Jody Vance has joined Leafs TV and is ecstatic that she’ll be working before Toronto games inside a studio with glass walls at the Air Canada Centre.

“I get to hang out at the rink instead of being locked inside a station,” Jody said. “This is the perfect job for me.”

More than 470,000 fans will walk by her new studio and, knowing Jody as I do, she’ll be gabbing with a whole lot of them.

“I love mingling with people,” she admitted, and I won’t argue because I’ve seen it first-hand, when Jody and I were on location while working for Sportsnet during Grey Cup weeks.